Thursday, 9 May 2013

UN climate alarmists preparing their next trick: A "flexible" 2015 agreement, not "cast in stone"

The UN climate talks are - thank God - not of any interest to major international news media anymore. However, just in case somebody is interested, the latest round of this endless talkathon wrapped up in Bonn last week. The UN club of international climate alarmists has now realized that it will not be possible to reach a binding treaty in Paris 2015. Instead, they are now pushing for something that will appeal to political leaders - a "flexible" treaty, which includes all the beautiful words about "saving" the planet, but does not include any tough binding clauses. Christiana Figueres, head of the UN climate change secretariat, summarizes the plan: "the agreement of 2015 cannot be cast in stone, cannot be frozen in time".

The one significant news snippet to emerge from the week-long talks was that officials are broadly agreed that any new Treaty agreed in Paris in 2015 will have to be significantly more flexible than the oft-criticised Kyoto Protocol.

There is a consensus building that the new treaty will incorporate ambitious emissions targets and climate action plans, but it will also feature mechanisms that allow for these targets and strategies to be made more ambitious still as the science demands it or new emission-cutting technologies emerge. As such, new more ambitious climate targets could be agreed in the future without having to re-open the entire Treaty - a scenario that would inevitably lead to years of additional negotiations. Speaking to Reuters, Figueres signalled her support for the idea, arguing that "the agreement of 2015 cannot be cast in stone, cannot be frozen in time".

Such flexibility would significantly increase the likelihood of a deal being reached in 2015, but it will also raise concerns among green groups who will fear that the ability to change targets at a later date may give politicians the cover they need to sign up to a treaty in 2015 that is insufficiently ambitious, on the grounds they can always make it more demanding at a later date.

Of course, this talk about "these targets and strategies to be made more ambitious still" is just obfuscation. The intention is to get the politicians to agree a "flexible" deal, full of rhetorics, but empty of substance.

Knowing the unwillingness of the current political leaders to concede that the entire global warming/climate change business is a a hoax, it would not be surprising if they actually would sign yet another meaningless piece of paper.